Here’s to a new home, new adventure, new memories.

~The Wilders

Life is different in our new home. We left behind our wildflower gardens, water gardens, and 14 acres of mature hardwoods and moved to a place with a lot of non-native plantings from the previous owner (including a lot of fruit-producing trees and shrubs) on a tiny lot that backs up to a cliff. It is a much drier place as well. We had two days of rain last week, a first of that duration since we moved in May, and recorded 0.85 inches of rain. That is by far the greatest amount we have seen in one event.

If you have followed this blog you know that I have several trail cameras that I set out in our woods in NC to record the happenings of our wild neighbors (wildlife neighbors, that is). I have posted many times on what the cameras saw – coyotes, deer, squirrel, bobcat, turkey, opossums, raccoons, and some birds including hawks and owls. After moving here, less than a mile outside Yellowstone National Park, I wondered what the cameras might see at the edge of town where we now live. I started out by setting 3 cameras around the walkways near the house and one up at the base of the cliff above the house.

The motivation for setting the cameras close to the house was the sudden cutting of many of our tomato plants a couple of weeks after we planted them in the fenced beds you see in the photo above. The previous owner had installed the pictured rabbit fencing along one side of the house and then had welded wire cages over a lot of plants both inside and out of the rabbit fencing to keep small animals and deer and elk from eating his plants. He also installed an electric fence along the back edge of the yard (where the hill starts to get steep going up to the cliff) as a large mammal deterrent. It all seemed to work well until the tomato plants were cut down. A trail camera video revealed the culprit to be a critter I was unfamiliar with – a bushy-tailed wood rat (aka pack rat). They are kind of cute but have the abilities and smarts of a raccoon combined with a tree squirrel. It is very difficult to keep them out of something once they get an interest in it.

NOTE: all videos are best viewed full screen with sound up.

–A bushy-tailed wood rat running around up at the base of the cliff. I have many video clips of them around the house running by one of the cameras.

Over the summer, the cameras captured many of the usual suspects over and over – mountain cottontails, various birds in the garden or at the very small water hole we created, our local cow elk browsing on the shrubs on the side of the house without the electric fence, mice, and lots of wood rats. The cameras at the base of the cliff have produced some good footage but are a pain since the wind that blows almost constantly here (especially during the day) causes the vegetation to move which triggers the cameras. I have to check them (now only one) every few days and even then, I often have a few hundred video clips to scroll through.

There have been some interesting and surprising stories recorded on the cameras thus far. Here are a few of the highlights from our first few months in our new place…

=Some elk walking along the base of the cliff above our house. They also frequently walk along the road in front of the house and browse on shrubs on the side not protected by the electric fence.

-This beautiful red fox is a frequent visitor to our water hole and also regularly cruises by the camera up at the cliff.

-A pair of coyotes walk by the cliff camera. They have been very vocal all summer and probably had a den in a rocky cliff across the road that passes by our house.

-Here’s a slow motion clip of a coyote carrying something. I can’t tell what that is, can you? There is an old pronghorn carcass up under a ledge at the base of the cliff so perhaps it is something from that but I can’t be sure (and that is another mystery – how did that pronghorn carcass get to that location?)

We get clips of raccoons several times a week, usually at the water hole where, being raccoons, they just can’t seem to help themselves as they explore in the water with their paws. Of course, they also often get a drink while there. But recently, we’ve caught two surprising incidents involving raccoons on that trail camera.

-Raccoons are opportunistic predators but this video really surprised me – a raccoon carrying what looks like a freshly killed adult mountain cottontail. Did the raccoon kill it? Did something else and the raccoon found it? Could it have been hit on the road?

There are at least two raccoons that visit our place, one with a normal-looking tail like the one in the previous video, and this one, with a skinny tail. They visit so often that once I see it is a raccoon, I often quickly zoom through the video clip just to make sure nothing unusual happened. Last week, I caught the skinny-tailed raccoon on a couple of contiguous clips and noticed a small detail – the raccoon seemed to flinch a few times. I went back and looked again and was surprised at what I saw. See if you can tell what happened in the next two clips.

-Notice how the raccoon is seemingly reacting to something. Can you see it?

-I looked closer and saw the cause of the raccoon’s concern. And I wonder if the raccoon got hit based on the apparent rubbing of its face toward the end.

I zoomed in on another clip made right after the raccoon walked away (unfortunately, this makes the video a little more out of focus). But take a close look…

-Here you can see the prairie rattlesnake watching the raccoon walk away (look closely and you can see the rattlesnake rattling its tail).

I encountered this small rattlesnake about a month ago at the water hole. I walked over to look at the water level and the snake moved its head a bit from its hiding place in the rocks. It quickly retreated into the rocks and I had not seen it again until these video clips. Ironically, this video was recorded about three days before some big wildlife events here in the neighborhood. A black bear sow and cub were reported walking around town about two weeks ago. The sow climbed a fence on our street and was hazed by the residents and took off up the hill with her cub. That same day, a neighbor called and asked if we could come over and remove a prairie rattlesnake in their yard (in a much earlier conversation we had volunteered to do that if they ever saw one). That was also a small rattlesnake which we safely relocated to nearby uninhabited land that provided suitable habitat. Was this the same one as in our yard? Not sure.

The wildlife encounters continued this past week. Melissa is off backpacking with some friends from NC so I am here by myself. One afternoon, I looked out the upstairs bathroom window and saw something dark sitting on the boulders in my neighbor’s back yard – a bear! I went out and found the sow and cub under their apple tree so I banged on the metal lid I had grabbed with a can of bear spray. The startled bears ran up a tree and stared at me. I backed away until they climbed down and then continued to haze them and they ran off, crawling underneath the electric fence that spans both of our back yards. Thirty minutes later they were back. Once again, I went out and hazed them until they ran off up the hill. I called our local Bear Awareness coordinator (yup, that’s a thing out here) and have set up an appointment for a site visit this weekend to review the electric fence and look at what trees might need to be removed (we have 3 apple trees on our property planted by the previous owner but they have not yet produced fruit). Bears are in their hyperphagia mode right now and are eating as much as possible before winter comes and they retreat into hibernation. Black bears are one thing to have, but the same attractants could also bring in a grizzly, and then you have an entirely different situation. So, the bird feeders have come down and I picked the fruit from our plum tree and the remaining few apples on the neighbor’s tree (with their permission). There is still a huge crab apple tree to deal with and that will probably need to get cut soon.

When I checked the trail cameras, I found evidence of the bears on that day at both cameras.

-The sow and cub bear caught on the cliff camera that afternoon

-Here are the bears getting a drink at the water hole in between the two times I hazed them. Wandering the neighborhood is hot work apparently.

As I mentioned, this is but a small sample of what the cameras have captured since our arrival in May.. Once again, the trail cameras have proven invaluable in learning about what we have in terms of wild neighbors in our new surroundings. I haven’t seen the bears again for two days. Here’s hoping the bears head out of town and don’t get into any trouble. And I will be looking for the return of the skinny-tailed raccoon and wondering if it is okay after a possible rattlesnake bite.